


the janice rand chronicles

by dalekbarbie



Series: breathe, come together, breathe [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Crack, F/M, Humor, M/M, Multi, yeoman rand is a badass and don't you forget it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-28 22:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/679623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalekbarbie/pseuds/dalekbarbie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the thing about epic romances is that they're just super for the people involved, and totally awkward for everyone else. Or, how Janice Rand conquers the universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

About three days into the Enterprise’s five-year mission, Janice is having a pity party of one in rec room B, eating replicated ice cream (which everyone knows is only to be eaten as a serious last junk food resort) when she notices she is being blatantly stared at. Blatantly judged, is more like it, and it is not cool, not today, because everything is terrible today and just…just fuck her life. Janice manages two more bites of what some engineer apparently thinks passes for chocolate before she puts her spoon down as aggressively as she possibly can and looks up to meet the eyes of the starer in question.  
“You might as well just come over here and join me, I can’t take this anymore.” It is most definitely not a question, and she gets an epic raised eyebrow in response—what, is everyone a Vulcan now?   
The guy sits in the chair across from her with a bowl of vanilla in front of him topped with honest-to-God gummy bears. Janice does not even hide her covetous glances, he’s been staring at her, after all, so she can do what she wants.   
“Want some?” He asks, offering her the small bag of gummy bears. “They’re fine, I swear.”  
Janice waits for a few seconds before she snatches the bag away in the manner of an animal unaccustomed to human contact. He totally notices. At this point, as her little sister would say, it’s whatever.   
“You’re Rand, right? Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met before.” He says, as she liberally covers her remaining ice cream with candy. She nods.   
“You’re Cupcake, right?” She gives him credit for not even bristling at the nickname. Everyone knows about it and it’s still hilarious, and he gets a new dessert-related name almost every day. Janice knows this because Kirk did already ask her to compile a list of future cupcake-themed puns for his perusal. This is her life.  
“Giotto, actually, which if you think about it kind of sounds like gelato so it does sort of count. I’m kind of amazed no one’s thought of it yet. I mean, it’s right there.”  
Janice looks him in the eye, deadly serious as she pops a cold green gummy bear into her mouth. “That, sir, is a secret I will take to my grave.”  
Giotto nods, eyes steely. “We should hang out.”

They totally do. 

After the first seven months, Janice has settled into as much of a routine as she possibly can, when she’s basically a glorified personal assistant to an actual crazy person who spends all his free time being all googly-eyed over the first officer. It turns out to be way better than she’d hoped, since she hoped she just wouldn’t get sucked into some terrible doomsday scenario or somehow abandoned in a backwater hellhole with, like, only Scotty for company. She would totally die, or they would kill each other, because she could not even begin to handle that. Fingers crossed, though.   
Janice kind of hasn’t had a best friend since the seventh grade, and once that best friend moved away her inner curmudgeon went “oh, fuck it” and she just spent all her time at the library and eventually just thought she’d get a few cats and some kind of job and that would be it. Somehow she ended up in Starfleet and she loves it, even though sometimes she wishes she was allowed to have a phaser because she would use it. She is totally jealous of Giotto because he does have access to advanced weaponry, but she really doesn’t get how he resists the urge to punch/stun everyone who pisses him off. He gets this faraway look in his eyes when she mentions it during Friday Movie Night and she can tell the Zen thing he is trying to do is totally working.   
“But you have to answer my question.”  
“Why? You ask me like 1500 questions a week. I am not obligated to answer your questions, Rand, I really am not.”  
“You will anyway.” She says, nibbling on a corner of the chocolate bar they are sharing.   
He gets the look again, the one that says he’s wondering if somewhere there’s an alternate universe version of him that has a way more interesting life than the one that spends all his free time painstakingly writing letters to his family back home and hanging out with the most sarcastic yeoman in the galaxy. “Fine. Marry, fuck, kill…God, I don’t know why I’m doing this. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Kirk. I hate you, I really do.”  
“You’re doing this because you adore me. Because we are easily the coolest people on this entire starship and everyone is totally jealous.”  
Giotto looks at her like she’s insane. A lot of people spend a lot of time doing that on this ship, Janice thinks. 

The next day Janice hands Kirk a handwritten list of the next two weeks’ nicknames for Giotto. The list that Giotto wrote himself, actually, because he thinks it’s funny and that his nicknames are better, and thankfully he has perfect penmanship and it really does look like an old Southern lady wrote it. All those letters he sends to his grandma are totally paying off, and not just in shipments of candy and homemade fudge that Janice is allowed to share. (No one else knows about the candy or the fudge, and Janice is very cool with that because more peanut butter fudge makes a happy Janice. God, she really needs to get out more.)  
“These are really good, Yeoman. I don’t know how you’re still coming up with them.”  
“It’s a gift,” she says, trying to look anywhere but at Kirk, who is shirtless because he’s always shirtless in his quarters, and is also shirtless in an increasing number of other places. It’s not that she doesn’t think he’s hot; she does, she has eyes, she just is not into the perfect-looking type. Also she does not want to be murdered by someone else who does think he’s hot, which they all know about thanks to the fact that everyone on this ship is about as subtle as a flying brick, and also thanks to that one incident with the truth serum that No One Talks About. No one except her, and Uhura, and she’s sure little Chekhov does because seriously, the mouth on that kid. What she does understand is pretty risqué.   
She meets Uhura and Giotto for their customary twice-a-week lunch and wastes no time. “So, how are things going up there on the USS Sexual Tension?”  
Giotto doesn’t choke on his soda but it’s really close and Janice counts that as a win. Uhura rolls her eyes.   
“Better than two weeks ago, but I did have a thought that if we ever run out of dilithium there’s got to be a way to harness awkwardness to power the ship. And that’s all I’ll say because I would really like to enjoy my lunch.”  
“You should tell engineering about that idea. Speaking of engineers—“  
“Don’t even, Rand,” Uhura says, an edge of danger in her voice. Giotto raises his eyebrows and remains wisely silent. Janice folds her hands on the table and levels her with the most Classic Rand stare in her arsenal.   
“Do you really think that ‘don’t even, Rand’ has ever worked? Do you?”  
“Fair point.” Uhura blushes a little and spears a cherry tomato with her fork, looking everywhere but at Janice, which totally confirms Janice’s theory that Uhura wants to get with Scotty and eventually make a bunch of insanely smart ginger babies. It’s more of a working hypothesis, really. Anyway.   
Giotto wipes his mouth and places his folded napkin in his lap like a proper gentleman. “What about you, Rand? Found anyone that warms the cockles of your heart yet?”   
Uhura smirks and happily munches on a baby carrot. Janice hates them both, she does. Especially since today is Valentine’s so hate is her default mode.   
“Never say that again. And no, I have not.”  
“Well, you never know. Maybe you’ll meet someone,” he says, and Janice is positive he knows something she doesn’t.

It turns out he does, the smug bastard. 

Kirk delegates the planning of a Valentine’s dance to her because inside he’s totally 12, and also must absolutely hate her. If she didn’t already know that Kirk and Giotto’s relationship started out as hate and has now become neutral tolerance because Giotto is the human equivalent of Switzerland, she really would suspect he knew about it. You’ll meet someone. What does that even mean? Basically all she does to plan this clusterfuck is put up some streamers and spend two hours making really obnoxiously pink posters that are so glitteriffic they are bound to make Kirk so deeply regret making her mastermind an event for four hundred fucking people that he’ll never treat her like a glorified party planner ever again. Then she hangs everything up and uses an insane amount of tape just because she feels like being a jerk and thanks whatever sadistic deity is listening that she wasn’t responsible for the food.   
Uhura comes over at 2230 to do her hair, which is really weird since Uhura has never shown even an ounce of interest in Janice’s general half-assed appearance. Yet here she is, giant bag of hair supplies in tow, flatironing and basket-weaving and doing all this hair jujitsu that Janice does not understand, but she’s hardly going to kick her out. She did bring platonic friend chocolates to keep her distracted while the hair-foolery was happening so it’s really all good.   
“I am not wearing that. Nyota, what—what in God’s name is that, even? I’m going to look like a pregnant lady going to the rodeo.”  
Uhura huffs, hands on her hips. “I bought it last time we were planetside, I went shopping with my sister in Kenya. The color would really look nice on you.”  
Janice stares at the dress. “I’m going to look like walking diarrhea medicine.”  
Uhura bites her lip. “It’ll be dark in there, though, so no one will be able to tell. Come on, please? For me?”  
“Why are you trying to get me all…gussied up for this?”   
Uhura lets loose with the hairspray. “I just thought you might like to look nice. Hold on, you need to wipe your mouth off, you’ve got chocolate everywhere. Sometimes it’s frankly alarming to me how everything we ever do together revolves around food.”  
“You love it,” Janice sing-songs, and looks in the mirror. Uhura really shouldn’t quit her day job since Janice kind of looks like she’s got a basket made of hair on her head, but still. It’s the thought that counts. 

She does wear the flowy pink dress that Uhura let her borrow and she won’t lie, it’s growing on her. Everyone has already shown up at the party, pretty much, and Janice spots the captain and Spock immediately, over in the corner, a respectable foot of space between them like they think no one on this ship has been privy to the soap opera that is their lives. Spock has his hands primly clasped behind his back and Kirk’s eyes are as bright as a kid’s on Christmas who’s about to get a pony.   
The thing about epic romances is that they’re great for the people involved, but totally awkward for everyone else. Barf.   
Janice moseys (as Giotto’s grandma would say) over to the refreshment table where Dr. McCoy is not-so-secretly doctoring the punch. Without looking up he fills a cup to the brim and hands it to Janice. She accepts, because McCoy is the good kind of wino who drinks top-notch booze. She drains the glass in two swallows and holds it out without saying anything.   
Mccoy narrows his eyes in what turns out to be a gesture of approval. “You’re all right, Rand.”  
She thinks she should consider inviting him to poker night sometime. Nobody would remember poker night afterward, but it would probably be a good time.   
“Yeah, seriously,” Mccoy says, and then Janice realizes she must have made some exclamation of disgust out loud. “Don’t know who those two think they’re foolin’.”  
“They might as well just go at it right here, some people still have credits riding on it. Not saying who, but Uhura.”  
McCoy laughs, a weirdly loud chokey kind of laugh, and he’s looking at her. Like, not in the ‘Janice, what did you even say’ kind of way, but like…looking at her, and goddamn it she is going to kill them for being in on this and not saying anything.   
“Some people have credits riding on you too, kid. Better not disappoint them,” he says, in a drawly way that should not be as sexy as it is but holy crap on a fucking cracker, whoa. She’s still going to kill them, but she’ll probably, you know, do it later.   
Kirk touches Spock’s arm like a frigging Victorian romance novel heroine and Rand is just getting buzzed enough that it’s almost romantic. From across the room, Giotto winks at her, and she can see one of her stupid sparkly posters right above him. God, these people are all lucky she doesn’t use her powers for evil, they really are. Especially Giotto.   
“Care to blow this cupcake stand?” Janice says, a sip of whatever the hell McCoy is drinking burning on the way down.   
“Don’t mind if I do,” McCoy says, and grabs a couple sandwiches off the table. The fact that he doesn’t even try to steal food and head off with some yeoman in secret absolutely does not warm the cockles of her heart.   
Well, mostly.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rand realizes she may no longer be the ship's resident weirdo. She's kind of sad about that, since she sort of liked being the interstellar equivalent of that one relative nobody talks about. Huh.

Nine months after she first sets foot on the ship that will be her home for five long years, Janice has a small epiphany when she’s in her quarters doing her hair before her shift starts. As she’s looking in the mirror and cursing under her breath at that one little freaking part that will not stay put, she realizes several important things.  
1\. She may, in fact, no longer be the ship’s resident weirdo. This is far more distressing than she could have ever anticipated. (She kind of liked being the intergalactic equivalent of that one relative nobody ever talks about.) Huh.  
2\. She actually has a stable group of mature adult friends. For a while she hadn’t ruled out just spending her later years with whatever wild animal colony was willing to take her, but there you go.  
3\. She may also, in fact, have a boyfriend. Gentleman friend, whatever. They haven’t quite settled that. A real one this time, but then again nobody else knows about Roger, the imaginary paramour Janice made up so her mother would just stop crying.  
4\. This hairstyle is totally working for her. Whoa.  
Were she a totally different person, or had she unknowingly been hit very hard in the head during the course of her morning (which has happened), Janice might freak out or have a bit of a cry over that. But Janice Rand does not play that. She gives herself an approving nod in the mirror, which jars loose a swatch of hair, and then she does give in to the impulse to throw a can of hairspray at the wall. Yeoman Danners in the next room must think she’s seriously damaged by now.  
Her inner monologue of "YOU'RE GROWING UP JANICE YOU'RE A REAL BOY" is kind of on her mind all day. She even misses an opportunity to scoff at Kirk when he makes a truly terrible pun on the bridge and everyone notices. Kirk looks at her like she’s just pulled off her Janice-mask and revealed that she’s actually Keenser in disguise and Spock looks oblivious because he’s totally above puns. She’ll get him one day. Uhura is busy doing her job and doesn’t notice because she’s badass and thank god, Janice thinks, slipping away having gotten Kirk’s signature for something she’s already forgotten on her PADD.  
She has plans to meet McCoy for lunch but she’s finished early so she heads to sickbay. To be totally honest she doesn’t really like sickbay for one reason, and that reason is tall, blonde, and so totally socially incompetent that she makes Janice look smooth in comparison.  
“Hi Janice!” Nurse Chapel says with aplomb. “Is there anything I can do for you today?”  
“Uh.” Janice croaks out. She feels kind of awful about how she can hardly carry on a polite conversation with Chapel, like, this is something she should be able to do as a human being. Thank Christ the ability to carry on non-awkward conversations wasn’t a prerequisite for joining Starfleet or she’d still be the absolute worst waitress Say Fudge ever had.  
“Rand,” McCoy says, leaning against the doorframe of his office and totally schooling everyone within a ten-foot radius in unintentionally sexy posturing. “Step into my office.”

She does. 

Janice does not, in fact, end up eating lunch, but she is so okay with that.  
Later, Uhura totally stonewalls Janice’s attempts to get the lowdown on what, if anything, is actually going on with Scotty. Janice hasn’t really spent a whole lot of time with Scotty but she has consumed things he’s distilled and seen him dominate Giotto and Kirk in an impromptu eating contest and that has earned her respect. He seems like an overall decent dude, and he and Uhura are the oddest of odd couples, so Janice is encouraging the situation as best she can. Mostly she just reduces all conversations on the subject to base innuendo, in what she has dubbed “Kirking,” and it seems to be working so far. 

How the hell she ends up on the away team on a mission to Antede III along with Kirk (of course), Spock, McCoy and Chapel she’ll never know. Sometimes she wonders if Kirk picks the members of the away team solely for comedic value…she absolutely would not put it past him. He once didn’t tell her that in her haste she’d only put eyeliner on one eye and he definitely had the chance to, so she now puts nothing past him. And she also made a pact with little Chekhov that should he ever notice anything jacked-up (yes, she had to explain the term) going on with her, he’ll tell her. She totally trusts him because he’s like a human-sized puppy and she has been so good and resisted every urge to pet him, unlike a certain crewman who shall not be named (Sulu, natch.)  
While McCoy takes readings and fusses over Kirk like a pageant mom, Rand and Chapel are tasked with…well, nothing, and Janice makes a mental note to ask McCoy why the hell this even happened. He’ll tell her, eventually. It may take some persuading but to be honest she kind of hopes it does.  
Rand walks around for a bit, enjoying the feel of non-recycled air on her skin. Then she notices Chapel sitting on a big rock near a still pond all by herself, her hands clasped primly around her PADD on her lap. She looks like she’s looking straight ahead but Janice knows that look; it’s the one that says “don’t mind me, I’m not lonely.” Crap. Janice cannot allow this to continue, because in the first few months of the mission when her only actual friend was Uhura who was busy all the time, she spent a lot of her time with the Forever Alone look on her face; unlike Chapel, she figured out very early in life that sarcasm was a much better shield.  
Chapel greets Janice with her customary smile. She doesn’t say anything for thirty seconds or so and Janice kind of wishes the ground would just swallow her alive already because holy mother of awkward this is awkward. Horribly so, and it hits Janice all at once that the reason she’s so uncomfortable around Chapel is because Chapel kind of reminds her of, like, an irrationally nice version of herself from some other less messed-up universe. Chapel’s overly friendly where Janice is incredibly snarky but those things are their protection from anyone seeing inside just the same.  
“I’m sorry,” Chapel says then, glancing over at Janice and then fixing her eyes absently in the direction of the still pond.  
Janice is momentarily stunned. “What?”  
“It’s just that I know—I know you don’t like me much, I just wanted to say I was sorry if I’d, you know, done anything, or…”  
“What?” Janice parrots back, eyes wide as saucers. What is even happening.  
Chapel takes a breath, hands still clasped around her PADD like she’s holding on for dear life. “It’s all right if you don’t like me. I know a lot of people don’t really like me, I’m not exactly very…sociable. It’s just, I’m trying to be social. I’ve never been very comfortable around people I don’t know, but Dr. McCoy has really been trying to get me to talk to people, to not be so, so—shy.” She spits out the word like it’s poison. “I don’t want to remember this whole mission as five years I spent in my cabin by myself, doing nothing because I hardly know anybody.” She blanches, clearly totally embarrassed at what’s come out of her mouth. “I didn’t mean to unload on you like that. I’m sorry.”  
Janice takes a deep breath and feels like she’s been a total dick. “Chapel, if you apologize one more time I’m going to push you into that pond.” Chapel’s eyes widen and she scoots away just a bit, as if that extra inch would save her if Rand did decide to go on a one-woman rampage. “Metaphorically speaking. What I’m trying to say is I don’t not like you.”  
Chapel deflates a bit; that was clearly the best she’d been hoping for out of this shitshow of a conversation. “I’m sor—“  
Janice holds up a hand. “Nope, I don’t think so. Tonight, my quarters, 2100 hours. Don’t look at me like that, we’re not meeting for a backalley fight or anything, we are going to hang out.” If Giotto were here he’d probably tell her the poor woman might prefer the fight, but he’s security detail for some ambassador so he’s too busy for Janice Time.  
Chapel smiles a little, a small, tentative smile and her eyes light up just a fraction. “Okay.” Apparently they’re hanging out. Huh. 

They totally do hang out. Janice follows through on things she says with the ferocity of a rabid animal in a trash can, so she is ready. She is not, however, prepared for the full force of Christine Chapel off-duty and determined to become her new BFF. Sometimes, she realizes, all you've got to do to make friends is go in there with the sheer determination of a Vulcan at a science fair: you're going to do this, and there is no 'or else.' 

If Janice had to describe later exactly why she fell utterly and completely in definitely-platonic love with Christine Chapel, she would note the following:  
1\. The woman shows up at her quarters with a present. It’s a painting she did of what Janice learns is a narwhal, once she stops laughing so hard she pees a little. And yes, that thing goes straight up on the wall so she’ll see it every single day for the next five years. It would’ve haunted her dreams anyway.  
2\. Once Chapel has a few shots of a mysterious substance Janice pilfered from McCoy’s office and gets more than a little shitty, she admits that as a teenager she was in a country duo called The Heartshakers. (This so explains the hair.) They had a top-twenty hit entitled Baby Cherry Pie Heart. And yes, Janice downloads the shit out of that. She wonders if it might be too early in their friendship to get the T-shirt.  
3\. Janice doesn’t remember exactly how it happens, but she wakes up the next morning with drag makeup on only one half of her face. Her quarters are covered in clothes and candy wrappers and her mirror reads “FUCK UNICORNS” in pink lipstick that is not even her own. Her heart skips a beat. That could also be ascribed to the stuff she stole from McCoy that is making her mouth taste like she blew a robot.  
4\. Any one of these things would have been enough for Janice to not rule out getting gay-married on their next shore leave, but…again, too early.

There are three messages on her PADD from McCoy. The first politely asks whether she knows where Chapel is. The second asks whether she touched the experimental solution from his bureau and something about a ‘potent hallucinogen.’ The third is, well. A lady doesn’t tell, but she’s no lady; it says ‘I’ll be by your quarters bright and early if I don’t hear from you, God knows what kind of mess you’ve gotten my nurse into, Rand. Hope you’re all right, too. LHM.’ She only stares at that one for two minutes, tops. Really, she swears.  
Janice tries to at least even out her makeup in the lipstick-smeared mirror and while she’s looking for eyeliner in her makeup pile because her life is, always has been and probably always will be some kind of a mess, she has another realization. She wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

Also, she’s so buying that T-shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Say Fudge is totally a Susan Elizabeth Phillips reference. If you caught it I LOVE YOU. As far as I know there is no band called The Heartshakers but there really should be a song called Baby Cherry Pie Heart. I like narwhals, they're like whale unicorns, which is awkward for everyone so I made them Chapel's favorite animal. Also, that is not a sentence I ever imagined I would write. Thanks for reading!


	3. janice rand and the enforced friendship space, or: pirates!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rand and Kirk are imprisoned by some very rude aliens and under the influence of truth serum and her own pure moxie, Janice makes a fourth friend. And then learns something she never, ever needed to know.

Janice Rand is Not Sure About This, and her mental capitalization is warranted. Her lizard brain totally screams DANGER JANICE, AVOID SITUATION NOW but when has she ever in her life listened to her more helpful instincts? Twice, and she still got food poisoning both times so there, lizard brain. There.  
The unavoidable situation is that the captain has been dosed with some kind of truth serum by some less than hospitable natives and now Everything Is Terrible. Well, maybe to everyone else but to her it’s pretty much the blackmail opportunity she’s been waiting for since about fifteen minutes after she met James Kirk. Cha-ching. She can tell he’s trying to just not talk and he looks all kinds of constipated and she would feel bad, but…that would require a serious head injury or interpersonal skills that she does not possess. These are the perils of being Janice Rand.  
“Uggghhhhh,” the captain garbles out a sound that Janice assumes is supposed to be a word. “It’s so hot here, Rand, I feel like my insides are melting.” He starts to peel off his shirt and Janice is already so disgustingly sweaty that she barely notices. “They’re melting.”  
Gross, but not altogether embarrassing.  
“Also, your hair’s a mess. Point blank, period, a mess. Oh God, sorry.”  
“Apology accepted,” Rand says, rolling her eyes. He’s right; the impossible humidity on this planet has turned her cool basket-y hairstyle into what looks like a decomposing bird’s nest held together only by sweat and pure gumption. “When do you think they’ll get us out of here?”  
Here was a run-of-the-mill prison cell out in the butthole of nowhere, as Kirk had put it several minutes earlier. The dossier Uhura had prepared to brief them on the native population had very helpfully neglected to mention that the giant cactus-fish-people-things that inhabited the small villages on the surface viewed humanoid women with a fire and pitchfork level of contempt, so they’d been arrested pretty much immediately and subsequently drugged to the gills. Janice had now been in a small jail cell with Kirk for 184 minutes.  
He’d been talking for most of that.  
“I don’t know. I wish Spock was here.” Kirk gets a faraway look in his eyes at that, like he’s gone deep into whatever Spock-thoughts he’s hiding in his mind palace and Janice never, ever wants any further details.  
“That sentence makes me want to bang my head against these bars until I lose consciousness.”  
Kirk gives her an oh no, you didn’t look and purses his lips. He looks like a big sweaty man-fish like that and it’s both gross (to her) and probably very attractive to most everyone else. “Why do you hate me, Rand?”  
If the sad puppy eyes come out, she’s going to bludgeon herself into oblivion. “I like you fine. I just don’t want to hear how much you like your boyfriend over and over and oooover until we’re either rescued or we drown in our own perspiration.” 

“I don’t get why you never want to be my friend. I’ve tried so hard…”  
And there it goes, she thinks, the saddest thing she’s ever heard. This man can be alternately infuriating and as instantly likeable as a sad kitten all alone in a gutter and Janice hates that because it makes her feel bad and makes her want to be friendly but she’s already got three friends and that…makes absolutely no sense. She’s doing it again, she realizes, shutting people out because on some level she knows they just might understand her quirks and her weirdness and God forbid, actually like her as a person. She seriously wishes she could have realized this when she wasn’t so sticky everywhere and everything wasn’t so blurry.  
“Sorry, Rand,” Kirk says, shifting a little further into a corner as if the heat is any less suffocating two inches away. “I am aware I’m totally embarrassing myself right now on a variety of levels, I just—“  
Janice sighs and wishes the air were a little cooler than body temperature. “Fine.”  
“What?”  
“Fine, let’s—let’s be friends.”  
Kirk looks at her like she’s grown a second and third head. “Is this always how this goes, for you? You just decide you’re going to be friends with someone so you just…make it so?”  
“No. But it’s Nurse Chapel’s tried and true strategy for all interpersonal scenarios—this and hopeless gazing—so I’m giving it a shot.”  
He seems appeased and a bit happier; the crooked smile on his glistening (ugh, what is wrong with her) face almost making her shriveled heart grow several sizes. “What’s her deal, anyway?”  
Janice wonders how many hours they have left of being stuck together in an enclosed space and figures it’ll be at least two more, so she’s got time to at least start on the Saga of Christine Chapel. 

Even though she gets virtually no blackmail material out of their time in captivity (or as Kirk called it, ‘an enforced friendship space, isn’t that awesome’) and her hair finally collapses, Janice has to admit there are worse people she could’ve been stuck with. She almost kinda feels distracted enough from her dehydration to admit she’s enjoying herself, but then Spock and McCoy burst in and everything gets wayyyyyyyy better.( She does, in her weakened state, count out the y’s in her head.)  
“Janice. Janice! Can you hear me?” Janice can, in fact, hear McCoy from where he’s bellowing directly into her face. The dead can probably hear him.  
“You have no indoor voice. We’re inside, use your inside voice,” she kind of slurs. She’s so thirsty she’s seeing, like, one and a half of him. “Also, do you have any water?”  
He tells her she’ll get some when they’re beamed back up and helps her up, which is harder than it sounds when she’s so weak it’s like trying to help a sack of Rand-shaped potatoes into a standing position. He eventually gives up and carries her and it’s awesome, she’s gonna tell all four of her friends about it forever because when you’re on drugs and severely dehydrated things are so romantic.  
Nearby Spock has an arm slung around Kirk who is doing his best impression of a grown man who can walk in a straight line and is not high right now. Spock for some reason wore all black to the hottest effing planet ever, why.  
“I have to tell you something,” Kirk says, and Janice can tell from the slightly loopy tone of his voice that she’s gonna want to hear this, so her busybody ears perk up like she’s a bloodhound on the scent.  
Spock continues stoically supporting Kirk as they hurry out to the beam-up coordinates. “It would be best if you waited until you are no longer under the influence of hallucinogenic compounds, Jim.”  
Kirk acts like he’s considering this for a few seconds. “You should wear that all the time, you look like…like a space pirate and I think about that a lot. You have no idea.”  
“I suppose I do now, as do Dr. McCoy and the yeoman,” Spock says, as calmly as he possibly can when everyone knows his brain is probably exploding.  
“I have a name!” Janice attempts to yell, but as a mishmash of syllables comes out she can’t stop replaying the pirate thing in her head and thinking ‘jackpot!’

For the next eight weeks she sends Kirk a pirate-related pun every single day on the bridge when he’s deep in conversation about something serious. By some miracle he does, in fact, remain her fourth friend.

**Author's Note:**

> set in the same universe as "breathe, come together, breathe" but can be read as a standalone.


End file.
